Western Mines continues run with long nickel intersection

Current market darling Western Mines Group has continued a strong recent share price run after completing 400m of drilling at hole MTD026 at its Mulga Tank nickel-copper-platinum group element project, 150km north-east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia’s Goldfields region.

After starting the month at a share price of just 12 cents, it hit a company high of 90 cents in today’s intraday trading on the back of its latest news.

Management says it observed significant examples of disseminated and remobilised nickel sulphides in the first 250m of its most recent drilling. The company concluded that shallow disseminated mineralisation appears to extend across the majority of the Mulga Tank complex, stretching about 3.2km.

Multiple intersections of high-tenor remobilised massive nickel sulphide blebs and veining were seen, with confirmatory portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) readings up to 12.2 per cent nickel, 0.91 per cent copper and 0.4 per cent cobalt and with an average pXRF nickel value of 0.40 per cent across 340m of ultramafic rock.

Western Mines expanded its current diamond drilling program after its successful recent capital raise. An additional eight holes are now planned to systematically test the Mulga Tank complex.

The company says further target generation work will see the drilling continue until at least the end of the year. Half of the additional holes will target extensions of the shallow disseminated mineralisation, or undrilled areas of the complex, and the other half will follow up on areas of the basal contact in the company’s search for massive sulphide.

The Mulga Tank project is described by the company as a major dunite intrusive in WA’s underexplored Minigwal Greenstone Belt. Its previous drilling has shown significant evidence for a working sulphide mineral system and is considered highly-prospective.

Western Mines believes the main dunite body has Mt Keith-style potential and drilling recently uncovered a monster disseminated nickel sulphide intersection greater than 600m in length.

Management says the current hole intersected 340m of variably-serpentinised and talc-carbonate-altered high magnesium dunite ultramafic rock between 60.2m and 402m, below 60.2m of sand cover. In the top 250m of the hole, intervals of disseminated magmatic sulphides to 2 per cent coalesced in places to interstitial blebs of 3 to 5 per cent sulphide and net textured 5 to 10 per cent sulphide.

Platinum group metals have previously been found in assays at Mulga Tank, but may not be expected to show up in pXRF work. The average pXRF nickel value across 412 readings taken from the logged 340m ultramafic portion of the hole, is 0.40 per cent nickel. The company says the higher copper content of both the remobilised sulphides and zones of disseminated sulphide was above that previously seen in other parts of the complex.

It says the intersections were some of the shallowest and most frequent examples it had seen to date.

This appears to extend the mineralisation footprint across the complex from the Western Margin to MTD020 - some ~3.2km. The entire Complex is prospective for deposits of Type 1 Perseverance-style basal massive sulphide - multiple deposits may well be expected given the scale of this clearly well mineralised system. The top 250m of this hole appears to contain some of the richest shallow sulphide mineralisation seen so far.

The company describes itself as small, but with a big project that has an exciting risk-reward profile and significant near-term news flows. It is targeting Komatiite-hosted nickel mineralisation akin to the world-class deposits in WA’s Goldfields.

Kambalda’s 35 million tonnes at 3.1 per cent nickel, Perseverance’s 50 million tonnes grading 2.3 per cent nickel and Mt Keith’s whopping 643.7 million tonnes going 0.58 per cent nickel, are Western Mines’ target models. With the company’s shares increasing 700 per cent this month and drilling continuing to uncover more nickel sulphides, who knows how far this will run.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au